eHarmony Free Communication Weekend, July 23rd – Aug 1st 2010

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This event occurs in the past. See this post for the most up-to-date free events

Update 7/25/2010: It appears that this free event only allows you to take the communication so far – see the comments below for more details. It doesn’t appear that the free weekend is all it is cracked up to be, at least for this event. If anyone has more details or experiences with this, please feel free to comment below. Thanks!

This eHarmony free communication weekend is far more than a weekend – it’s a full 10-days of free communication. The Free Communication Weekend begins at 12:01AM on Friday, July 23nd and ends at 11:59PM on Sunday, August 1st. Please note that this free event is only available to the United States (sorry Canada, but you did have your own free 10-day communication “weekend” in the past).

eharmony 10 day free weekend july 2010

Even though you will have 10 days to use eHarmony for free, I still recommend signing up in advance if you can. Having your profile and matches already available and ready to go when Friday arrives gives you a nice head start. If you are reading this and the event has already started, I still think you should sign up (obviously). But for those who know in advance, I say give yourself every opportunity for success that you can.

If you already have an account with eHarmony, remember to turn on the setting to provide new matches if you have it turned off! This should be done as early as you can.

The normal eHarmony free communication weekends are great but I do feel that having a large amount of success in 3 days is a tall order. Will you find dates on a 3 day free weekend? Sure, but with 10 days you can have time to build more of the conversations which will lead to more first dates. This really is a great opportunity to get a real feel for the service.

Just a note to anyone who has not read my online dating guide: some singles think they should only talk to one person at a time with online dating. I believe this is a mistake (you can read why here) but it is even a bigger mistake when you only have a 10 day window. It may seem like a long time but it will fly by before you realize it.

Note: Chemistry.com is also having a free weekend this coming Friday through Sunday. If you ever wanted to compare the two services, now is a perfect time.

eHarmony.com – Try for Free July 23 – August 1.

 

Related posts:

  1. eHarmony Free Communication Weekend, July 2nd – 5th 2010
  2. eHarmony Free Communication Weekend September 3 – September 6, 2010
  3. eHarmony Free Communication Weekend July 4th – 8th, 2012
  4. PerfectMatch Free Communication Weekend: July 1st to 4th
  5. eHarmony Free Communication Weekend, July 25th to 28th

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About the Author:

Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.

Comments

  1. EHB  July 22, 2010

    Brad, this event excludes eHarmony Mail and photos. Unpaid members cannot give out contact information or email addresses unless they cheat the system. Meanwhile, paid members are led on.

  2. Brad  July 24, 2010

    EHB – I guess I look at things differently. I have always seen the guided communication (which still works) as one of the biggest benefits of eHarmony. All that is disallowed for communicating is jumping straight to email conversations. Sites that are strictly based on email communication that have free events (such as Lavalife or DatingDirect) limit these events to a few hours, probably for this very reason. I think that eHarmony more than makes up for the limitation by the length of the free trial period.

    Also, as far as communication limitations, I had thought this was always the case with free weekends? This is why I made the comment above “having a large amount of success in 3 days is a tall order” – because it is with guided communication! But that hardly makes the weekend worth skipping.

    No photos is a shame. I think allowing photos but still prohibiting jumping straight to email would be a nice compromise for eHarmony to make.

    Also, no one needs to cheat the system (and I definitely would recommend against trying to do so to any of my readers). Why not just try the system out? If you don’t like the guided communication process then eHarmony just saved you some money by letting you test drive it.

    Also, how are paid members led on? Do you suggest this because of the chance that they would try jumping straight to email conversations but receive not response? Or is it because some of their guided communication could stop after the 10 day period?

  3. Jared  July 25, 2010

    Brad– I think what EHB means is, after you get through with guided communication, it will not even let you go to Eharmony mail this time. I just got through guided communication with a nice girl, then I received an Eharmony mail from her and it won’t even let me read it unless I sign up. I don’t like this. How much can you get to know someone through guided communication alone, to make you want to sign up? I like this girl, but I don’t even know what she looks like and I’m not going to sign up just to read her email.

  4. Brad  July 25, 2010

    Wow…I had no idea that was the case. That’s horrible. It’s not really free at all in that case. I’m sorry to hear this is the case and will update the post to reflect this.

    Do you happen to know if this is the case for the “normal” 3 day weekends? Since I’m married now I don’t frequently find myself trying out the free weekends and was making an apparently incorrect assumption that free really meant free.

    Thanks for the update!

  5. EHB  July 25, 2010

    It fries me that they didn’t inform their site affiliates (like LRR) that there’s a difference. That’s why there are thousands of websites who posted announcements of this event and each one of them misleads their readers. “All free, no obligation.” In addition, some of the ongoing TV commercials don’t make the distinction. eHarmony will get what it deserves.

    Keep your fingers crossed that they don’t make this FGCE permanent, i.e., make GC free all the time.

    eHarmony Blog

  6. Brad  July 25, 2010

    Yeah…I’ve actually emailed them about this. Not sure if I’ll get a response but I’ll post an update if I do. Thanks for the heads-up on this EHB.

  7. Adriana  July 28, 2010

    WOW!! This is not cool at all….all the hype about ‘Free Communication for 10 Days” is not really all that great!! So I get to open communication and can’t even read the mail without becomming a member, this is insane and not fair at all. Eharmony led everyone on to this so called great deal for 10 days and you can’t even communicate with mail. This upsets me because I always tell everyone how great this site is, but misleading the public is not cool at all. I refuse to become a paid memeber yet again!! I like to take advantage of free communication just to see how it goes, but there is a let down each time, so I will not pay. It is unfortunate because this guy I went thru all the steps with and myself will not get to know eachother now. I wish eharmony would have been more clear on the free communication until August 1st.

  8. Adriana  July 28, 2010

    Oh yeah, and I forgot to add, “NO CREDIT CARD, NO OBLIGATION”, really?!?!?!? What is the problem then……if there is no obligation, why can’t we use the site to its complete advantage.?

  9. Brad  July 28, 2010

    Hey Adriana…yeah, not very cool at all and I agree the marketing was rather misleading. My biggest concern is something that EHB hinted at, though. If eHarmony makes the rules of the “Free Guided Communication Event” permanent, all paying users will never know if they are communicating with another paying member or not. This in turn may cause paying members to lean towards jumping past guided communication all together which in my mind removes a lot of the value of the service (what can I say, I LIKED guided communication when I was using the service!).

    Obviously, this may be a non-issue but his mentioning it did cause me to wonder. It’s strange because in almost all cases making additional parts of a dating service permanently free would be a good thing but I’m not convinced that is the case if the rules would be like this 10-day event.

  10. EHB  July 29, 2010

    Brad, traffic to our promo codes page DOUBLED every day since Saturday, compared to the same day of the week one week earlier. Whereas typically this page receives more visitors only on the last day of a FCW.

    Conclusion: If eHarmony decides to make this FGCE permanent, i.e., make GC free all the time, they stand to gain an enormous increase in short-term profits.

  11. Brad  July 29, 2010

    Yeah, I imagine they are doing very well with this event and I also imagine they may be tempted to make this permanent.

    I was thinking about a permanent FGCE and I could think of only one way I would think it could be an okay idea: if they made it clear who were the paying members to their subscribers. Put a little star in the bottom corner profile photos or something. I do hate the idea of a paying subscriber being “led on”. I know I would find it frustrating using a service that required me to invest a few days of communication only to end up waiting for an email response that would never come.

    However, if subscribers knew who was paying, they could better decide if they wanted to pursue guided communication that may not lead to anything else. I think this could possibly benefit non-subscribers: if they were able to get several guided communications to the email point (hopefully in a short period), they could then say, “Yeah, this could be worth signing up for”.

    That said, if they didn’t do something like this, I don’t see giving non-subscribers a benefit if it means a sacrifice on the end of the people who are already paying. I really doubt they would implement my idea, though. Dating services generally don’t like to reveal who is paying (for obvious reasons). I’m only aware of Match.com doing this (and they only do it if the subscriber signs up for the platinum package and then only these platinum users are recognizable as subscribers).

    We’ll see what happens but I suspect they’re going to be very tempted to go with a permanent FGCE.

  12. jane  August 2, 2010

    My two cents. I signed up in the middle of the free promotion. I found a few people I would have liked to see their pictures that I started communicating with. They had advertised $45 off of a 3 month membership if you participated in the GC. I had been doing that and decided I wanted to sign up. I called and was told I had to wait until the free week (10 days actually) was over. Why would they make me wait? I had credit card in hand ready to sign up and they said no. They said I would receive an email with a link a day after the event was over. I have not yet received an email and I impatiently called again today and was told it could come any time this week, basically whenever marketing got around to it. So now I have been shut out of communicating with my matches at all and have to wait for an email I am skeptical is even coming in order to get their advertised $45 off a 3 month membership to a company/website I don’t even think is worth being a member of anymore. How aggravating. I would imagine most people are resorting to computer dating because time is short and valuable. This is proving to be extremely aggravating and a giant waste of my time and of the people that already have memberships and have been spending their valuable time communicating with me and are now wondering where I went. I used to recommend eharmony to a lot of my friends. Not anymore. It’s terrible that companies in our country are making potential customers wait and inconveniencing them when they are ready to spend money, WANT to become members and join under the promotion they advertised. I just don’t get it anymore.

  13. Brad  August 2, 2010

    Hey Jane – yeah, that is *really* strange that they would make you wait. They own the service after all! If they want to allow you to sign up for a deal they have advertised it seems to me they should be able to do that pretty easily.

    Not only is it aggravating in the sense that they are creating an inconvenience, it is also aggravating because I’m sure there are plenty of people who are waiting to continue conversations they started during the event. Hopefully they address the issue soon.

  14. Cinthia  August 20, 2010

    Oh man, I just joined EH 2 days ago in hopes of finding what they promise. For the time being I am just seeing how it goes, and well, there’s the catch, they send me profiles of some really interesting guys, 2 of them already said would like to Communicate. I had no idea I had to “subscribe” just to read their message. Oh well… It’s disappointing in a way, they have no clue I won’t be able to respond. 🙁

  15. Cynthia  December 7, 2010

    It’s basically false advertising. You can’t initiate contact with a match… the match has to contact you. You can only go through guided communication answering multiple choice questions. At the end of guided communication, paid members can exchange emails, but with the free communication for non-paying members you get far enough to want to say a real “hello” and eHarmony says “Sorry” it was just a tease and you have to pay if you REALLY want to talk to them. I wish someone could expose that their ads are misleading. You spend 45 minutes filling out a detailed questionnaire just to be told you have to pay money after all.

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